That bit sounds like hell to me but I'm glad you had fun! In the UK we have special carriages where you're not allowed to make a noise so you can avoid that kind of thing.

https://www.metrotransit.org/northstar-line

The lines that goes between the Mall of America, downtown Minneapolis, and St Paul are light rail, and are faster than what would normally be considered a "tram" or "streetcar".

I mainly mentioned it since the parent comment was about a group of girls getting on the train purely for the experience of being on the train, and my experience seemed pretty similar.

Don't know that it terribly matters one way or the other though I guess.

So there are some tram/streetcar/light rail systems out there (like the one in New Orleans) that consist of individual railway vehicles, and are thus not trains.

Haha when I took Caltrain daily to mountain view this was my nightmare. Bluetooth headphones and a white noise app were a requirement.

Those field trip days, and the rides home on baseball game days... I do not miss that commute.

I grew up in the eastbay, and at least while I was growing up, the bart train was a friendly environment of people interacting with one another. Obviously it came with some not so pleasant things (i.e. homelessness and unwanted touching) but more human none-the-less.

I don't think it would have been many children's first trip either, just a cheap morning's entertainment for the nursery...

1) Fuel tax. There's no tax on jet fuel, but rail companies pay tax on their diesel or electricity

2) Inflexible service, but high expectations. The European rail timetable is changed twice a year, and those trains will run (in normal circumstances). There will be a train from X→Y every hour from 5am until midnight, and those trains run even if very few people use them on a particular day. An airline can change the schedules more easily, and cancel/rebook passengers at fairly short notice.

3) Rail infrastructure is subsidized differently to aircraft infrastructure. I don't know enough to compare which benefits the most. Externalities aren't costed properly (e.g. noise and pollution).

4) Railways must still provide low-profit-(even loss)-making services, they may be expected to do this using profits from other routes. For example, long distance intercity trains might be subsidizing rural services.

More of an issue for lumbering freight trains than passenger trains though.

Answering your question, on the issue of price they note that no fuel tax is is paid on airplanes fuel and no VAT (21%) on flight tickets.

I think it’s a clever win/win play: reducing short haul flights in favour of railways not only reduces emissions and noise pollution, but it also frees up some capacity at Schiphol.

And there’s been some success already: the house has accepted a motion to eliminate the Schiphol-Brussels route.

By american standards, both methods are dirt cheap.

Ryanair cuts every cost you can imagine. No free water or pretzels, tiny seating area, no first class, outskirts airports, no checked or carry on, tarmac boarding.

On trains you get sufficient space to stretch your legs, a power outlet, wifi, unlimited baggage etc. and you get to arrive and depart in the city center.

I think the pricing is based upon consumer value more than service costs.

1. The discount airlines have become masters at turnaround times. When the planes are sitting at the gate, they're not making money. They slashed these as much as they could.

2. They only fly one model of airplane (typically either the 373 or a320) to simplify maintenance.

3. Most major airports in Europe are privatised. One of the effects of this is that they've become giant malls that want to get people through them, so landing fees have steadily gone down (there are edge cases where the airports pay the airlines to go to them, but those are rather rare exceptions).

4. Some airlines (more specifically Ryanair) fly to cheaper/more outlier airports. If you take a Ryanair flight to Paris, you're landing in Beauvais Airport, which is almost halfway to the english channel. You'll then have to take a bus. When in europe, I usually prefer Easyjet for the reason that though they're more expensive, you're landing at an airport with decent transit to the city you're visiting.

5. There's no frills at all. If you're just flying with no luggage, you won't believe how cheap it can be (I flew from madrid to london for 25 euros). But the fills aren't cheap. Checked baggage is more than the cost of the flight, food is a rip off, etc.

Also, trains in europe are still often state-owned (not the case everywhere, I know), so they're forced to run uneconomical lines for political purposes, etc.

Thing may have changed since a few things happened meanwhile, but a couple of years ago Ryanair got about 100 Million EUR [1] (sorry, link in Italian) from various Italian airports. Verona airport used to pay up to 24 EUR per passenger to low cost companies.

My understanding is that some airports have been opened for political reasons even when there was no real need, so they are "forced" to make such agreements in order to guarantee a decent amount of passengers.

I'm wondering if this happens also elsewhere in Europe.

[1] https://www.corriere.it/economia/17_marzo_18/cento-milioni-a...

As a european who moved to the US recently, this was mind boggeling the first time I boarded a plane in the US. I arrived at the airport expecting a typical 10 minute boarding time, but kept getting more surprised at how inefficient they managed to make boarding a plane as time passed. Just the time spend waiting in the plane at the gate before they let you get out seems to be longer in some cases than the typical turnaround time for euro flights.

Your statement that "As far as I know, for example, trains are significantly more fuel efficient per passenger-mile" definitely has some merit, but... trains are only more fuel efficient per passenger if they are as full as planes. An Airbus with 180 passengers might beat a train in per passenger miles if the train is not loaded.

Considering that, trains definitely are cheaper for highly utilized routes (commuting routes, for example), but for a leisurely trip across Europe, an Airbus packed to the gils could be cheaper.

The complicated area of railroad tracks probably doesn't help either. Someone is paying for them and the maintenance is frequent judging by the business my friends working on the railroads get.

And that's the catch. I've been told that years ago it was better, but try to catch a train to a secondary city in New England and you'll often find that the only offering is an occasional Amtrak branded bus.

I don't disagree that some other services might be alright, but that's clearly not one of them.

Düsseldorf-Munich for 26,70€ including reserving a seat.

Kiel-Düsseldorf 29,90€. To get back, 26,90€.

Kiel-Munich and back for 53,80€.

Not even Ryanair is that cheap, especially when you consider that with trains you don’t have to go through security, have none of the check-in times and other bullshit, and can take luggage without paying a 60€ surcharge.

You just have to check sites like https://bahn.guru/ to find the cheapest connections.

For americans its something quaint and wild whereas for europeans its just a basic form of transportation

You're either repeating outdated cliches from the internet, or you must not live in a large metropolitan area with passenger train service.

Looking at the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas in the US, you're already at nearly half the population of the US. And I know from the experience of having ridden commuter rail in most of those that most of them have commuter rail, i.e. passenger train service.

You've got to go pretty far down the list to find one without commuter rail or even a subway/light rail system (which I'm not counting as passenger train service).

If it isn't the majority, it's at least a normal experience for a huge swath of the population.

"Yeah, we have passenger train service"

"good passenger train service?"

"Hey, lets not get ahead of ourselves"

I personally think a well-executed acoustic guitar singalong can add a lot of real joy to any group experience.

I've played in rock bands since I was 15 (I'm north of 50 now), and I've been on stage in front of a thousand people and I've played to killer mosh pits and all that, but my best memories of all those years were the after-parties where it was just me and my bassist with acoustics and a room full of drunk people singing along to the Eagles or Sublime or maybe even Weezer...

Now, it helps to have a professional level acoustic guitar and, of course, a professional lead singer to hide everyone's mistakes, but it can be a magical, cathartic experience when the room all sings at the top of their lungs...

Great memories.

Of course, this changes if alcohol is involved.

I get the feeling that showcasing some skill in a public fashion is loved in the USA, not so much in the UK. We typically want to sit and not disturb others, and find any other kind of disturbance awkward; we try to sit quietly and pretend it isn't even happening, eg. not even looking at the person making the disturbance. eg. some people arguing at the back of the bus probably won't make people at the front of the bus turn around or tell them to shut up.

I think this is a bit different than busking which tends to be relegated to locations where people aren't required to hang around for long periods of time (like outside a metro station where someone enjoying your music can stay and chill for a while or just continue into the relative quiet of the station platform.

I don't have as much of a problem with street-corner busking, in large part because it can be avoided, but even that drives me nuts when I can't get away from it (outside a place I work, for example).

I love music, and when I'm in the mood, I'll seek out a street performance. City parks are great for this, and I think they're an appropriate venue. A rail car is not even remotely appropriate, and a subway station during your unavoidable morning commute, with loud brass instruments and a shitty PA system, echoing off the walls, ought to be a crime.

Yes, even if the guy is really good. You can stand not being the center of attention for a few hours.

Yeah, us Brits don't like to do anything that sounds like it might be fun when we're under stress. We want to sit there and bitch and complain about the fact nobody is fixing the track and who is going to get fired for it. We definitely don't want to have anyone distract us from that with anything that looks like it might be fun. /satire

Jerry and I share sentiments on this.

John Belushi concurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqpNQ9AJYgU

So we were sitting there wondering if the same storm that eroded the tracks had maybe eroded the cliff around that boulder, allowing it to tumble down through the oil tanker to send us plunging into the flood waters below.

Brooding over that was less fun than the distraction of the sing-along.

After MacWorld we did a little sightseeing, then took the Coast Starlight to Portland, where we changed to the Empire Builder back to Chicago.

Except what actually happened was that an avalanche in the Cascades held us up until a work train called "Snowball" showed up to clear the tracks. It had a massive snowblower, a plow, a flat car, a crane car, and a couple of coaches full of workers and equipment.

We then missed our connection, so they loaded us on double-decker buses that raced to catch up with the Empire Builder. It was very memorable.

(I do recommend the California Zephyr, and second the parent's suggestion of spending the whole of it in the observation car, but skip the part of the route between Chicago and Denver; Denver and onward is where the real action's at.)

My family went by train from Flagstaff, AZ to Trinidad, CO for a wedding and the observation car was amazing, it was part of the Southwest Chief route [1].

Even through what you'd think would be boring stretches of New Mexico not one scene wasn't awe inspiring. We got to see landscapes out of westerns and mostly away from roads/main bustle, but you'd be surprised how there is always something to see and almost always people living out there. We had to go through the Rockies in historic coal mining country Colorado and had to stop once for freight trains to go by, but the views were amazing. It is fun to lookup what you are going through on Google maps and finding lots of interesting stuff. Trinidad, CO was a nice little interesting historical town, once a border town, where Fishers Peak was a guiding landmark for settlers on the Santa Fe Trail, with Native American, pioneer and Spanish history, that has a Masonic cemetery, old limestone masonry buildings and underground tunnels for coal, once the sex change capital of the world, and today it is now a cannabis hot spot [2].

Best part of the train is the view and you can get up and walk around unlike on a plane, the rides are longer of course but more flexible to move while traveling which is nice. I brought my laptop to work but the views were too good to pass up.

If I had more time I'd love to take the train all across the US. I wish there were more trains simply to see the less busy areas and interesting viewpoints you can't see from the road.

Amtrak does leave lots to be desired in terms of technology, price, the food (dining car wasn't good) and general areas like maintenance, but the observation car was difficult not to be up there the entire time.

[1] https://www.amtrak.com/routes/southwest-chief-train.html

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/20/health/trinidad-colorado-smal...

I did two of them and they are some of the best travel experiences I had in my life.

And it still exists (just for the record):

https://www.eurail.com/en/eurail-passes/global-pass

But of course the times have changed.

The huge thing about this was that for most young people at the time the 18 years birthday meant a lot, in most EU countries that was (is) a "threshold" you become to all effects an adult and getting an Eurail ticket was the first "totally independent" travel experience without the family, and you got for an all in all affordable to everyone amount of money "freedom", you met a lot of other young people doing the same, you could try to start a conversations with someone (a "peer") in (actually usually much improvised) other language, you could visit places you had only read about in books, etc.

It was a great experience.

China rail have pretty bad hygiene at that time. The passengers freely throw their trash on the floor and out of the window. The attendants swiped the floor every few hours. Every time they pushed a mountain of peanut husk away. There was a peasant family on board with a baby. The baby needed to relief. So the parents held him up to have him shit on the floor. The attendant saw it and really lost it. She scolded the hell out of the family.

But even so, it was a wonderful experience. The Chinese landscape is nothing short of awesome. And the culture that unfolded was completely unknown to me, so constantly interesting.

One thing that really made me take notice was the wide range of people. On the way to the Shanghai train station, we had walked by a Lamborghini dealership (I don't recall ever having seen even one of these in the USA) - there's a not-insignificant population of filthy rich people in and around Shanghai. But on the train we saw people peasants using an ox to plow a rice paddy of only a fraction of an acre. The degree of inequality was hugely wider than America or any other nation I've seen.

EDIT: the Shanghai airport maglev train was an interesting experience just to say I've gone 300+mph on a train, but otherwise totally boring.

I’ve also done Shanghai to Changsha and Changsha to kunming like that. It gets interesting west of hunan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo2ZsAOlvEM

Cattle?

People sometimes aren't just stacked, they're squashed.

"Don't sit with the cattle" is (IMHO) pretty harsh, and unnecessary.

And, for the record, cattle class seats are (or were) about the size of first-class airline seats, in the days before the bed capsules. It's not a cabin but it might be the least-cramped train seating you will ever encounter.

This is true, they're FAR better than standard airline seats. On the other hand, if you're going NY to SF you're going to be sitting in them for 3 days, so they better be comfortable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_class

But then you have to ask why the train is stopped in the middle of a crossing, rather than just knowing it's so the train police could remove the dude a few seats over.

If I were going with a partner, a sleeper seems compelling. But alone, the back is more than fine.

How much does it cost?

If we had 300mph bullet trains going across the country, it would make some sense because you'd get there a lot faster while still seeing the sights, it'd be more comfortable than an airplane's economy seats, and the ridership would probably be higher (which would lead to lower costs). As it is, long-distance rail travel in the US is an expensive disaster.

That said, a sleeper car on Amtrak gets you: a flat surface to lie down on, your own toilet (note the toilet is just there in the roomette, next to the bunk, prison style), access to a shower (your own shower in the rooms, one per car for the roomettes), access to the first class lounges, and includes meals in the dining car.

Rooms have a slightly wider lower bunk versus roomettes to sleep 2 (skinny) people and an enclosed toilet so you don't lose mystery from your romantic or work relationships. Roomettes are too small for a first world prison cell but have the beds oriented parallel to the direction of travel, which many people find more comfortable -- the rocking of the train is more soothing and less jarring.

If you have the time, don't mind paying four-star hotel prices for a two-star experience, and hate flying or have a medical condition that makes it infeasible you should definitely consider it.

Or, if you're on this site, it's a great excuse to sit in a small room with a view and not talk to anyone for several days, just read, write and program.

With spotty cellphone reception, so if you want to disconnect from constant connectivity that's also an interesting way.

It's a great experience, but if you're thinking of just sitting in there and programming in a room with a view, keep in mind that the scenery changes and is pretty amazing, which might distract you from programming.

This sounds like fun. I wonder if there are any European routes that are as long/uninterrupted that I could try that on.

I went London-Japan overland but my longest single segment was two and a half days (Moscow-Shymkent), and that was about right - time to relax and do nothing for a bit, but by the third morning I had definitely spent enough time in the same compartment, as nice as it was.

The London to Ft. William sleeper, when there's leaves on the line?

A sleeper for one is ~1'800$. About 300 more if you're two.

That's about half of a yearly train pass for Switzerland (2nd class). The pass allowes you to travel in virtually any mode of transportation without restrictions. Except for taxis, some boats and some mountain railways.

So yeah, that's pretty steep.

But that price includes the sleeper and meals. If you view this as the vacation itself, it's not far off the price you'd be paying for hotels and meals.

But compared to a one way flight, which can be had for as little as 100 bucks it's still pretty steep.

Alas, the experience certainly cannot be compared. It's not about getting to the destination, when you take the train. You pay for the entire experience.

You should take a TGV, you'll realize that at 300kph you don't see the sights.

That would be 3 days on Amtrak, or about 6 hours by plane.

I'd guess that for most cases flying instead of taking the train doesn't mean we spend the 6 days that we would have spent on the train (round trip) in a Los Angeles hotel eating expensive restaurant meals. I think most people would simply leave home later and leave Los Angeles earlier if flying, so that the time difference is spent at home eating whatever they normally eat.

Note that some people use Amtrak because they are afraid of flying. This way of looking at the prices does not apply to them.

Personally, I sort of want to do at least a section of the Empire Builder or the California Zephyr at some point. And I'd also like to take a transatlantic liner (well, the Queen Mary 2) from NY to Southampton. But probably only once and I'm fully prepared for the idea to be more enticing than the reality.

https://www.amtrak.com/onboard-the-train-sleeping-accommodat...

Here's a recent article that I found that describes the sleeping cars in detail: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/20/magazine/trai...

https://www.amtrakvacations.com/blog/3-important-things-to-k... (just googling 'amtrak sleeper' gets you this info!)

The NY<->Chicago line had toilets in the compartment - but I mean in the compartment, not a separate bathroom. So not so great.

The California Zephyr (Chicago<->SF) has common toilets. The one in our sleeper car was broken for the whole trip, for which Amtrak only gave us the slightest nod of recognition.